Material and nonhuman agency – surely this is a mistake? Is not agency a solely human property? How then can we devote a whole volume to a topic with such obviously shaky foundations? Certainly, the odds seem to be stacked against us when we think of agency as not only the capacity to act, but also the capacity to reflect on this capacity. A subject may feel his or her arm moving and recognise ‘ownership’ of that movement, but this is not necessarily the same as being able to reflectively understand that he or she is the cause or ‘agent’ of that movement (Gallagher 2007, p. 2). When agency is linked strictly to consciousness and intentionality, we have very little scope for extending its reach beyond the human.
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Material and nonhuman agency – surely this is a mistake? Is not agency a solely human property? How then can we devote a whole volume to a topic with such obviously shaky foundations? Certainly, the odds seem to be stacked against us when we think of agency as not only the capacity to act, but also the capacity to reflect on this capacity. A subject may feel his or her arm moving and recognise ‘ownership’ of that movement, but this is not necessarily the same as being able to reflectively understand that he or she is the cause or ‘agent’ of that movement (Gallagher 2007, p. 2). When agency is linked strictly to consciousness and intentionality, we have very little scope for extending its reach beyond the human.
